There’s hardly a day in crypto without a celebrity announcing a purchase of a Bored Ape or some similar high-end profile picture NFT, often to be flexed in the Twitter profile of the said celebrity. Just the other day, popular rapper Marshall Mathers, better known as Eminem, purchased Bored Ape Yacht Club #9055 for 123.45 ETH (roughly $453,000 at the time) and joined the ranks of non-fungible token (NFT) enthusiasts as he bought over the past weekend.
The amount of 123.45 is not a coincidence, it seems to be part of the game to set the purchasing amount to even numbers, lucky numbers, prime numbers, or something with 21 in it.
The OpenSea account that did the buying, titled Shady_Holdings (a nod to Eminem’s hit song The Real Slim Shady), was created just three days ago—likely for this exact purpose. Shortly after, Eminem changed his Twitter profile picture to show off his new NFT bling.
ENS domain names increasingly popular
As the trend among the rich and famous for buying profile picture images and digital art continues, another less recognized, and perhaps less prestigious and visual trend, is coming up to speed – buying ENS domain names and showing them off in Twitter profiles.
ENS, Ethereum Name Service, is a domain name service that for all intents and purposes works like DNS (Domain Name Service) domain names – they map hard-to-remember strings or numbers like IP- or Ethereum addresses to human-readable names like cryptoslate.com or vitalik.eth. All ENS domain names end with .eth.
To the surprise of few, there’s of course a competition for whose Twitter profile with a .eth name has the most followers.
Top .eth name doesn’t make it into top 50
The top-ranking .eth name on Twitter is parishilton.eth belonging of course to the American media personality, socialite, businesswoman, model, singer, DJ, and actress Paris Hilton. Number two on the list is American former professional basketball player Shaquille O’Neal, owner of the ENS name shaq.eth. Third, on the list is American singer and actor Trey Songz with the ENS name treysongz.eth.
However, not even Paris Hilton makes it into the top 50 of Twitter accounts with most followers in general, and the top list for .eth names may change quickly if other celebrities pick up on the trend of acquiring or creating ENS names for themselves.
Though hopes may be low for the ex-president of the U.S. Barack Obama (No 1 Twitter account in the world) to jump on the ENS bandwagon, artists like Justin Bieber (No 2, 114 million followers), Katy Perry (No 3, 108 million followers) and Rihanna (No 4, 104 million followers) may come with lower odds.
CryptoSlate Newsletter
Featuring a summary of the most important daily stories in the world of crypto, DeFi, NFTs and more.
Get an edge on the cryptoasset market
Access more crypto insights and context in every article as a paid member of CryptoSlate Edge.
On-chain analysis
Price snapshots
More context
Join now for $19/month Explore all benefits
